Barracuda is an unflinching look at modern Australia - at our hopes and dreams, our friendships, and our families.

He asked the water to lift him, to carry him, to avenge him. He made his muscles shape his fury, made every stroke declare his hate.

His whole life, Danny Kelly's only wanted one thing: to win Olympic gold. Everything he's ever done - every thought, every dream, every action - takes him closer to that moment when the world will see him for what he is: the fastest, the strongest and the best.

He's Barracuda, he's the psycho, he's everything his challengers want to be but don't have the guts to get there. He's going to show them all.

He would be first, everything would be alright when he came first, all would be put back in place. When he thought of being the best, only then did he feel calm.

A searing and provocative novel by the acclaimed author of the international bestseller The Slap.

About the Author

Christos Tsiolkas is the author of four novels: Loaded (filmed as Head-On) The Jesus Man and Dead Europe, which won the 2006 Age Fiction Prize and the 2006 Melbourne Best Writing Award. The Slap won the Commonwealth Writer's Prize 2009 and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2010. He is also a playwright, essayist and screen writer. He lives in Melbourne.

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Uncomfortable, that's how I felt about Dan Kelly when I first met him in the opening chapters of Barracuda. Uncomfortable is how Dan Kelly felt when he was removed from his public school where he was the swimming star hero, and given the golden opportunity to study at an elite private school, with the gift of a swimming scholarship under the guidance of coach Frank Torma. The chain of events that unfold in Barracuda lead to disappointment and regret, by many of the books characters. None more so than Dan Kelly. This is not a story with a gold medal and an adoring nation, quite the opposite. This is the story of moving up, fitting in with a 'better class', the expectation that comes with opportunity. Don't waste it. Of finding your way through life, new friends and the old friends who loathe you for leaving them, which of them wont let you down? And how do you grow up not knowing where you belong anymore? There are many questions raised here in a sometimes brutal and rarely subtle way. Thankfully the novel winds it way through past and present and allows me to see more deeply into the life of Danny Kelly, his family and friends, I discover how and why he is who he his. And it turns out that in his own way he, and his family, are really just like the rest of us. I wanted it all to be ok in the end and the author gently led me to understanding and resolution. This isn't an enjoyable fairy tale read, but a very good one. While reading this Australia beat England in the cricket, the sporting nation and media here are idolising their hero's. Chris Tsiolkas has me wondering how the losers are faring.

This book got me thinking, thinking about how we judge and treat people who are not very successful in the eyes of the society. Where do they stand? How should we treat them? What goes in their mind? Dan Kelly was the perfect example of all things going wrong and how he kept on spiralling out of control and ended up at a place where he was ashamed of himself. It was a confronting book as well, specially the way he was thinking and interpreting situation. Sometimes the way he wanted to lash out at others but controlled himself and the rage that was sleeping in his mind. The demons that were haunting him all the time was nothing but scary and I wonder how can one cope with it. But the ending was not that harsh, I could see ray of hope for Dan and people close to him. It was not the most comfortable read at times but it is a good book.

Christos moves on from The Slap with Barracuda, similar issues, but I believe does it with greater maturity and confidence. Dan Kelly is the the kid who can swim from Reservoir who is snapped up by C---s college( Scotch??) to boost the colleges standing and maybe produce an Olympian. The golden boys in the swim squad quickly isolate his difference wrong address, wrong looking mother, too dark, too.....Kelly reacts by becoming psycho Kelly and is driven by a need to beat these boys as much as by wanting to win. Failure brings self realisation via violence, acceptance of sexuality and in the end redemption. The book is about class. Christos asserts for the working class going to university fundamentally changes the relationship and dynamics that turns a person into the middle class and that this can not be unwound. But it is also about not just C....s college but all of Australian society appropriating sporting talent and discarding them when the sportsman or woman fails either on the field or in their personal life. Looking forward to his next one.

I was moved by this book in the first 20 pages. As Danny, a boy from the wrong side of the tracks, walks through the school ground on his first day at his new school, he begins the suffering from shame. This experience, although more powerful and tragic, reminded me of my experience of hanging schools and struggling to fit in. Danny's story high lights the injustice of class and shakes the reader to consider the damage done to young people from bullying. This book is not pretty. The story is not sweet. Like the slap, you may not like any of the characters, however I felt this book is more real and presents issues which we find too difficult to talk about. Christos Tsiolkas brings the tortured life of a boy growing into a man into focus with all it's tragedy, violence, and regret. A great Australian writer, who paints our society warts and all.

Having almost completed this book, I find it hard not to be disappointed by it, as much as I respect Christian Tsolkas as a writer. The plot itself seems to get bogged down and does not go anywhere, and the characters are harsh and cliched. I find the writing all over the place. Much of the book is written in the third person, and for no explicable reason, it jumps into the first person on alternate chapters on events that are out of synch with the rest of the book. With this, and the plethora of characters in the book and the intensity of the writing, it is a very hard book to read. However, I agree that it highlights the ugly, win at all costs attitude that pervades much of Australia, and because of that, there is a real purpose to the book.

This is a very difficult book to appraise. I was constantly picking it up, yet was anxious and uncomfortable while reading it. I thought the character development was excellent. Dan Kelly's experiences were real and raw, and while I didn't like him (or any of the other characters - much the same as in The Slap), I was ever curious to watch how his past and present informed his choices about his future. The possibilities were there for him, but he seemed unable to grasp them. Tsiolkas explored the slip into depression that would seem the likely outcome for Dan in a brutal and edgy way, and you could feel Dan sliding into the abyss right up until the end. Given this prodigious writing talent, why then does Tsiolkas insist on peppering his highly intellectual character/social explorations with overly graphic, aggressive and unnecessary sexual references and language? Do I really need to read the word 'c... ' that many times? Must I know about the intricate sexual details of Dan's love life? And, again? Subtlety is an exquisite tool, almost completely lacking in this book. I'm not sure the quality of the work outweighs the shock value that eventually became tedious, and an unwelcome distraction as a reader.

BARRACUDA by Christos Tsiolkas only needed to follow ‘The Slap’ to succeed in meeting every criterion for mass curiosity, success and celebrity. The chorus of praise for Tsiolkas began when he was awarded a Commonwealth Literary Prize that many feel is undeserved.
‘Barracuda’ , not unlike ‘The Slap’ is a similar pastiche of different styles, evocations, one-dimensional characters, recognisable characters from film and television that don’t sit comfortably in place or time, and pages of dialogue Ernest Hemingway would have tossed in the wastepaper basket as ‘shit’ to be discarded.
Not unlike the voracious predator of this book’s title, Tsiolkas, through his protagonist Danny, relies on shock and surprise to stalk his prey and bite off heads in spiteful retribution . One of his techniques is to place a cast of characters in a private school he calls ‘Cunts College’ (thus perpetuating the idea of female genitalia as disgusting and using it as a form of abuse throughout the book), which can only be described as a pretty clichéd device to tackle issues of class and bullying in Australian society.
Danny displays none of the qualities that would help us believe he shows promise as a potential Olympian nor are we ever actually told or shown just what it is that sets him apart from other swimmers who breathe in and out in the water. It’s hard to believe also that ‘Coach’ would ever be employed by a ‘snooty’ private school or any school, nor that his methods of coaching would be adopted by anyone.
By the end of the book Danny has ‘grown up’, renounced all his former belligerence and become what some will recognise as a Tolstoyan, driven by considerations, as Tolstoy was, of what it is to be ‘a good man’.
Those who are willing to dip their toes into the freezing lake in Scotland, where we first find Danny from Cunts College, and continue stoically to the last revelatory and redemptive chapter may find there is either more or less to this book than marketing reviews would have us believe. They may also find something different to say about it that would make a refreshing change from the insistent chant that it is a ‘serious’ novel by a ‘serious’ writer about class and sport in Australian society.
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I enjoyed Barracuda, especially as the story was based on my side of Melbourne. The streets and pools in the book were where I spent my youth. But after that novelty wore off, I found the book a teenie weenie bit drawn out. The jumping back and forth on the time line was only just understandable without jotting down dates in a notebook.
In the end I believe the message came together and complicated interactions were explained and put to bed. The characters were believable and writing was good. The relationship between Dan and his brain-injured cousin was a nice touch.